Elissar News

While there may be thousands of coronaviruses that affect bats and waiting to be discovered, the new pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2, that causes the disease COVID-19, is thought to have originated in bats before possibly jumping according to a hypothesis via another species to take residence in humans. In this context, scientists in Myanmar have found six new species of Coronavirus in bats.

The program “PREDICT” is part of a study published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE and funded by the government to identify viruses that are potential candidates to cause infectious diseases in human beings, especially in places close to wildlife.

The authors wrote “Ongoing land use change remains a prominent driver of zoonotic disease emergence in Myanmar, bringing humans into ever closer contact with wildlife and justifying continued surveillance and vigilance at broad scales”.

While studying hundreds of samples of saliva and guano (bat poop) of 464 bats belonging to 11 species in the period between 2016 and 2018, the scientists studied genetic sequences of coronaviruses discovered, and found “three novel alphacoronaviruses, three novel betacoronaviruses, and one known alphacoronavirus previously identified in other southeast Asian countries”, six of these were detected for the first time in bats in Myanmar, in “the Greater Asiatic yellow house bat” Scotophilus heathii, which was host to PREDICT-CoV-90; “the wrinkle-lipped free-tailed bat” Chaerephon plicatus, which they found PREDICT-CoV-47 and PREDICT-CoV-82; and “Horsfield's leaf-nosed bat” Hipposideros larvatus, with 3 forms of coronaviruses -92, PREDICT-CoV-93 and PREDICT-CoV-96.

In Myanmar people get close to the wildlife often, because of land use change and urban development, also because of ecotourism and the practice of guano harvesting as a fertilizer, since it’s considered one of the best fertilizers.

Authors noted that their work needs further research, to study the potential of these six new viruses to cross the species’ barrier as well as causing disease to human beings.

 Lead study author Marc Valitutto, former wildlife veterinarian with the Smithsonian's Global Health Program, said in the statement:” Worldwide, humans are interacting with wildlife with increasing frequency, so the more we understand about these viruses in animals — what allows them to mutate and how they spread to other species –– the better we can reduce their pandemic potential”.

Source: Plos one